Marrakesh – Family Feuds and Family Tombs
Arriving in Marrakesh in the late afternoon (because we arrive everywhere with only a few hours of daylight left), we hustled off the bus FOR THE LAST TIME!!!! Lord love a duck, we're finally free of the confines of our prison transport! I'll be using manual ambulation to move from destination to destination, if my atrophied leg muscles can even carry me after all this time.
We are not quite free of each other on this tour yet, as we had a half day of guided walking in the old city of Marrakesh. First stop was the Saadian Tombs, dating to around 1600. The tombs were lost for centuries until 1917 (walled in by the next dynasty to encourage the people to forget the prior sultan) when they were rediscovered through aerial photography.
The garden plots entomb wives, children and trusted chancellors of the sultan. The mausoleum in the courtyard is dedicated to Sultan Al Mansour's beloved mother. His favoured three princes are set apart in the Chamber of the Three Niches. Yet the most resplendent mausoleum, crafted from Italian marble and gold gilding, was reserved for Sultan Ahmed Al Mansour Ed Dahbi himself. To get a quick photo of the Chamber of 12 Pillars, you have to wait in line for your chance to have the Torture of 12 Cameras being shoved all around your face and over your head snapping photos while you also elbow and jar for position to get one reasonable photo of the darkened room.
Up next was the opulance and drama of Bahia Palace. The original part of the palace was built for Si Moussa, a former slave that rose to the rank of chamberlain and then grand vizier to Sultan Hassan I of Morocco, between 1859 and 1873.
Upon Si Moussa's death, he was succeeded by his son Ahmed Ben Moussa (known as Ba Ahmed) who took over residence in his family palace. Ba Ahmed continued to build on the palace as he rose to power between 1894 and 1900, even renaming it after his favourite wife, Bahia, which means brilliant. The palace was expanded to house his four wives, 24 concubines and many children.
Ba Ahmed rose to power through a sly and intriguing manipulation, which our guide alleged his mother had a strong hand in guiding. When the sultan died returning from a tax collecting expedition in 1894, Ba Ahmed hid the news of the sultan's death until he could secure his position as the country's regent by appointing his young nephew, Abd Al-Aziz, sultan. Abd Al-Aziz had older siblings that would have taken the throne if Ba Ahmed hadn't wielded his considerable political power to enthrone his 14-year-old nephew. As regent, Ba Ahmed had nearly complete control over the state until his death.
After Ba Ahmed's death in 1900, his nephew, now Sultan in his own right, ordered the looting of Bahia Palace. The next occupant would be Thami El Glaoui, a warlord and ally of the French Protectorate. The protectorate, in turn, evicted El Glaoui and instilled their resident general and officers in the palace.
Strolling out of the relative peace of the palace gardens (besides the hundreds of Instagram wannabe celebrities taking soulful selfies in every square inch of the place), we walked through Marrakesh's Mellah - Jewish quarter - which is distinguished by the wooden awnings, often adorned with the Star of David.
One of the nicknames for Marrakesh is the red city as the walls in the medina and older parts of the city were built using red sandstone.
Last stop for the evening was a relaxing break in the busiest square in North Africa. Upon hitting the delightful chaos of the Djemaa el Fna market, we thought it best to take in the cascading sunset from one of the rooftop patios surrounding the square.
Making the pleasantly long walk back to our hotel, we had a final group dinner and bid "bslema" (goodbye) to our fellow travellers and our guide.
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